Martin Walser, one of the most important writers of German literature, has passed away

2023-07-30 14:18:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Martin Walser, one of the most important writers of German literature, has

Writer Martin Walser

Writer Martin Walser died on July 28 at the age of 96 in Ibrelingen, where he spent his entire life. Walser left behind an extensive but also controversial body of work. Until old age, he wrote and published novels, stories and collections of stories, plays, radio dramas and translations, as well as essays and lectures.

At the age of 95, he published "Traumbuch" (Book of Dreams), and a year ago also the collection of poems "Sprachlaub".

Western society analyst

He was often called "the author of the century" and an unflinching analyst of West German society. Like no other contemporary German writer, Walser thematized the everyday life of the middle class.

Martin Walser in 1968

His heroes are officials, teachers, ordinary people, conflicts between spouses, bosses, friends or lovers with their aspirations, often making these characters also tragic of their time. With irony and sympathy, Walser portrayed his heroes who live with a sense of inferiority and see themselves as losers. In all his works he relies on his own experiences. Novels without biographical parts are not novels, but sociological works, he once declared.

Most of his twenty or so novels are bestsellers, most notably the 1978 novel Ein fliehendes Pferd (The Running Horse).

The first poems, journalism...

Born in Wasserburg near Lake Constance on March 24, 1927, the son of an innkeeper and a coal merchant. He lost his father at a young age, while his older brother was killed in World War II. He himself was a Wehrmacht soldier for a short time.

Walser began writing poetry at the age of twelve. After studying literature and philosophy in Regensburg and Tübingen, he worked for several years as a reporter, editor and author of radio dramas at Süddeutsche Rundfunk. In 1950, he married Katarina Neuner-Jele. From this marriage, they have daughters Franceska, Johana, Alisa and Teresia - all of them are involved in literature or acting. He had a son, Jakob Augstein, journalist and publisher, with Maria Karlsson, then partner and later wife of Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein, about whom the public learned in 2009.

Walser quickly became one of the most important and controversial writers in post-war German literature. For the story "Templones Ende" (Templone's End) published in the 1955 story collection "Ein Flugzeug über dem Haus" (Plane Over the House), he received the legendary Group 47 award.

Two years later, he published his first novel Ehen in Philipsburg (Marriages in Philipsburg) in 1957, for which he received the Herman Hesse Prize. In 1981, Walser received the "Georg Büchner" literary prize.

His book "Ein liebender Mann" (A man in love) has also been translated into Albanian.

The Auschwitz Declaration

Like many of his colleagues, Walser was politically active in the 1960s, opposing the war in Vietnam and favoring the Social Democrat Willy Brandt as chancellor.

Martin Walser: His speech in 1998 caused much debate

Walser was considered a leftist. And that is why he caused great outrage on October 11, 1998, when in his speech after the presentation of the prestigious Booksellers' Peace Prize, he declared against the "instrumentalization of the Holocaust." "Auschwitz does not lend itself to becoming a routine threat that can be used at any time as a tool of intimidation or a moral compass," Walser said at the time.

The then-president of the Council of German Jews, Ignatz Bubis, was present and later harshly criticized Walser. Several years of public discussion followed. Walser said he regretted that his speech had offended Bubis and explained in a 2015 interview with Spiegel that he was not referring to the instrumentalization of Auschwitz in German-Jewish relations, but to that in everyday German politics, as practiced for example by Günter Gras, in his rejection of the reunification of Germany or Joshka Fischer in supporting Germany's participation in the bombing of Yugoslavia./ DW